The Giant's Heart

George MacDonald, Retold by The Legendary Connection

You’ll find the full text of this classic story below… free to enjoy anytime.

It’s also part of our more immersive experience – Once Upon A Virtue: Tales of Bravery & Courage. Each tale comes with bonus storytelling tools: quick summaries for easy retelling, journaling pages, and children’s activity sheets that bring bravery and resilience to life in your family. Read the story below, then explore the complete experience.

📖 Get the book: Amazon
💻 💻 Get the digital version: Download Now

Long ago, beyond the wildest woods and the tallest mountains, lay the misty borders of Giantland. To ordinary people, it looked like a land of thunderclouds and towering peaks. No one ever returned from its borders, and few dared go near.

On the other side of a deep green forest, close to that mysterious land, lived a poor worker with his wife and a whole bundle of children. Among them were two especially curious ones: Tricksey-Wee, a bright and bold little girl, and her kind-hearted brother, Buffy-Bob.

One day, after a silly squabble, Buffy-Bob ran into the forest to cry alone, and Tricksey-Wee, feeling guilty and worried, ran in after him. She searched and searched until, suddenly, she found herself in a strange valley. But this “valley” was actually the space between two roots of a gigantic tree on the very edge of Giantland!

Climbing up one root, Tricksey-Wee discovered what she thought was a black mountain, but it was really a huge iron door with a knocker bigger than a ship’s anchor. Undaunted, she crept through a hole at the bottom that had been nibbled by a mouse as large as a pony, and entered a vast hall where a fire flickered in the distance.

She ran toward the warmth, but tripped over something cold and round. It was a thimble. A giantess’s thimble! And when she looked up, there was the giantess, peering through spectacles the size of stained glass windows, darning her husband’s white stockings.

Now, this giantess, named Doodlem, was not unkind, and Tricksey-Wee was not afraid.

“Run, dear girl,” the giantess whispered, her voice rushing like wind in treetops. “My husband, Thunderthump, will be home soon, and he loves little children, especially for supper!”

“But I haven’t done anything wrong to him,” Tricksey-Wee replied.

“That doesn’t matter,” Doodlem said gently. “Go. Hide!”

Just then, Buffy-Bob came racing into the hall, pale as milk. Tricksey-Wee grabbed his hand, and together they hid deep inside a giant broom, nestled in the bristles. A moment later, the door opened with a boom like thunder, and in strode the giant, his footsteps shaking the floor.

“Where is that tasty-looking boy?” he bellowed. “I saw one sneak in!”

“I haven’t seen him,” said the giantess, calmly.

“Wife,” he said darkly, “don’t lie. You know it’s Sunday tomorrow, and I always have my best stockings and a bite of something tender.”

Now the giant’s idea of a Sunday treat was one of the plump children he kept fattening by the fire. He’d already collected a dozen with plump faces and sleepy eyes. If they had just stopped eating treats, they might’ve been turned out for being too thin to eat! But they couldn’t resist Doodlem’s delicious baking.

Thunderthump roared again, demanding the boy’s whereabouts. One dough-faced boy pointed toward the broom. The giant grabbed it, shook it, but found nothing. Furious, he threatened to boil the tattletale boy as a warning. The others trembled but dared not speak.

That night, Tricksey-Wee and Buffy-Bob listened closely as the giant and his wife settled by the fire. Between bites of his stew, the giant grumbled, “I don’t feel easy about my heart.”

“What heart?” asked Doodlem.

“I moved it last month. The great she-eagle has it now. She thinks it’s an egg and sits on it all day atop Mount Skycrack. No one dares go near her. Her claws could kill me with a scratch.”

Tricksey-Wee and Buffy-Bob gasped silently. So the giant’s heart wasn’t inside him? Could it be reached?

“If I could just find it,” thought Tricksey-Wee, “I’d squeeze it good!”

Later that night, the children escaped through a rat-hole and crept through a tunnel inside a giant tree. The sap whispered like a stream through its wooden veins. Eventually, they emerged into a magical tree canopy filled with sleeping birds and whispering leaves. There, they met an owl who hooted in riddles and a nightingale who sang of love and patience. But it was a kind mother lark who finally told them the secret:

“The she-eagle’s nest is on Mount Skycrack,” she said. “You can only reach it by climbing the spiders’ webs that blanket the mountain.”

The climb was dizzying and exhausting. After what seemed like hours, the children found a large, drowning spider. Even though they barely had energy left to take another step, they rushed to help it out of the water. The spider promised to help them in return. The giant spider gathered all of his friends and family. They let the children ride on their backs for the remainder of the journey, scaling the shimmering silver threads up to the top of Mount Skycrack.

At the peak, the she-eagle sat on the giant’s ugly, throbbing heart.

With the spiders' help, they scared the eagle away. Tricksey-Wee dropped some spider-juice, which was deadly to giants, on the heart, and it shrank to the size of an apple. Buffy-Bob scooped it into a bag, and they hurried down the mountain.

At that moment, far below, Thunderthump roared in pain and collapsed. The children returned to the giant’s hall, where he was crying for his heart.

“You may have it back,” Tricksey-Wee said, “if you promise: no more stealing children. Never again cross into our land. And you must give your heart to your wife to take care of it from now on!”

The giant begged. He blubbered. He promised everything, even to let his wife care for his heart forever.

But as soon as the heart was out of the bag, it grew again. The giant lunged at them! Quick as a flash, Buffy-Bob drew his knife and stabbed it. With a final groan, Thunderthump fell to the ground dead.

The children returned home heroes, and the giantess, Doodlem, was finally free from cooking and mending for a cruel husband. She lived quietly ever after, planting wildflowers on the border of Giantland and whispering stories to the breeze.

As for the boys whom the giant had captured, well, once Thunderthump was gone, they slowly returned to themselves. Without the giant’s magic fog clouding their minds, they blinked and looked around, as if waking from a very long nap.

They were a little rounder than before, and some had forgotten their own names for a moment, but Tricksey-Wee and Buffy-Bob helped guide them home, one by one. Their families wept and laughed to see them again. The boys promised to eat more vegetables and fewer pies and, most importantly, to never follow strangers into the woods again, no matter how sweet the smell of cookies.

And as for Tricksey-Wee and Buffy-Bob?

They grew up to be brave and clever, with kind hearts and sharp minds, always remembering the time they once climbed to the very top of the world to find a giant’s heart and learned that even the mightiest can be undone by those who are small, but brave and courageous.

Story adapted from: MacDonald, George. The Light Princess and Other Fairy Stories. 1871. Public domain text.